by Edward Carey
‘What now? Who is out there?’
‘It is Mrs Piggott, my lady,’ came the housekeeper’s voice from the corridor.
‘Piggott? Why, Piggott? What, Piggott?’
‘Might I come in?’
‘I am being visited by my grandson, Piggott. We are having such a merry time.’
‘Please, my lady,’ said Piggott, still corridor-side, ‘I should very much like to inform you of the news of the house.’
‘It is hardly the hour for my gazette.’
‘Circumstances, my lady, unforeseen circumstances.’
‘Oh, stop nibbling at the door, Piggott! Step in then, be present!’
The Piggott that appeared in the room in no way resembled the Piggott that I knew. This was no starched and ironed Piggott, this was a very rumpled one with smudges upon her, and most notably of all, a slight gash upon her forehead.
‘Piggott!’ struck Grandmother. ‘How dare you!’
‘I’m so sorry, my lady,’ she said, ‘but I felt that I must, I felt it my duty . . .’ She saw me then, and rather than giving me the usual bow, let out a small scream. ‘Master Clodius! You are here, are you! You yourself! My lady, oh my lady!’
‘Piggott,’ said Grandmother, ‘don’t be messy, it isn’t like you.’
‘No, my lady.’
‘Be a good woman.’
‘Yes, my lady.’
‘What is the passion for?’
Mrs Piggott, her hands fluttering about, playing the piano though there was no piano before them, was at my grandmother, upon her knees and delivering her information, sotto voce, to my elderly relative’s right pinna. There was only the quiet rustling of her whispering for a little while, I could not hear her above the racket of the timepieces, though occasionally Grandmother would comment.
‘I know the train is late, woman!’
More whispering.
‘I also know there is a Gathering!’
More whispering.
‘How large?’
More whispering.
‘It must be split up. Tell those gentlemen from the city that I shall have their bodies fractioned if they do not break up the Gathering instantly. I don’t want to hear about it any more. No excuses!’
Yet more.
‘Tummis?’
Yet more.
‘You are certain?’
Yet more.
‘On his own?’
Yet more.
‘In this?’
Yet more.
‘Oh, weak stuff! Un-Iremonger!’
Yet more.
‘And Iktor and Olish?’
Yet more.
‘They have it?’
Yet more.
‘Well, I am sorry. I am sorry for that.’
A small pause, and yet more.
‘What?’
And more.
‘No!’
Still more.
‘Can’t be.’
A touch.
‘How did it?’
Some.
‘Among us?’
A bit.
‘It what?’
Some.
‘Our own!’
Some.
‘Which one?’
Some.
‘Him!’
A nod.
‘Alone!’
A mouthful.
‘They what!’
Again some.
‘No, no, no!’
Silence.
‘Where now?’
A very little.
‘Lost!’
A very little.
‘Then find it!’
‘Yes, my lady.’ Mrs Piggott spoke louder once more.
‘Then trap it!’
‘Yes, my lady.’
‘Then kill it!’
‘Yes, my lady.’
‘I don’t care about the Gathering, I don’t care about the storm! I want it trapped and I want it killed. At once, Piggott. Do not show your face to me until it is done. I’ll have you bleached, my woman.’
‘Yes, my lady.’
‘I’ll have you eat lye.’
‘Yes, my lady.’
‘And, Piggott?’
‘My lady?’
‘The other involved, the other one.’
‘My lady?’
‘I shall see to that. Personally see to it.’
‘Yes, my lady.’
‘And Piggott?’
‘Yes, my lady?’
‘There must be order, I’ll have no chaos under this roof. Bells to sound quite as they always do. But, perhaps, under the circumstances, an early bed bell.’
‘Yes, my lady.’
‘Go then, go!’
Mrs Piggott, so trembling, so shaken about, shook herself from my grandmother’s presence.
‘Ineptitude!’ hurled Grandmother at the exiting housekeeper with such force that it seemed her voice itself had closed the door. Grandmother was silent for a little while.
‘Did you mention Tummis, Granny?’ I asked. ‘Is all well?’
‘Do not concern yourself with Tummis, Clodius.’
‘I do hope he shall be trousered soon.’
‘Do not concern yourself.’
She looked at me for a long time, just looked. What a look it was. That look, I thought, was entering into my nostrils and through my earholes, and peeking about there, gathering information. Then she breathed in with great force, as if recalling that expeditionary look back to herself, back into her own body, where she inhaled it and considered it, before saying something in a way that was by no means quiet or peaceful but rather unhappy and, I rather thought, full of repulsion.
‘What shall you do out there, Clodius, in the city?’
‘I do not know precisely yet. Whatever Grandfather wishes of me.’
‘A good answer at last. You are an Iremonger, Clodius.’
‘Yes, Granny.’
‘I trust you shall behave like one.’
‘Yes, Granny.’
‘You must make our family very proud. You have it in you, I think, Clodius, somewhere within you, though you do disguise it so. If only for your mother, you must be a great Iremonger. You shall not let us down.’
‘No, Grandmother, I shall do my best.’
‘You shall do a deal more than that, for that is not half enough. You will start again this very day, this very moment. A new chapter! You must give your every thought to the family. Every little inch of you, Clodius, is for the Iremongers. You have a talent, I am told. And it is right that you do, it is exactly correct that Ayris’s son should have a talent. You have the breeding, Clodius. But you have much yet to do to be worthy of your blood, Clodius Iremonger. You must love it, love it, love that blood. Do you, Clodius? Do you love it?’
‘Yes, Granny,’ I mumbled, ‘it is good blood, is it not?’
‘The best! None better! Not even the Saxe-Coburg-Gothas can boast such liquid. Their blood is thin enough stuff. Ours is thicker. You cannot escape your blood, Clodius. Try it and it will go wrong in you, turn against your family and your own body shall go foul and fester. I know an Iremonger, a lesser Iremonger, struck out on his own. And do you know what happened to him?’
‘No, Granny, I do not.’
‘His own legs went septic on him. He puffed up with pus.’
‘Poor fellow.’
‘There are great secrets hidden in our blood. Deep mysteries. You cannot escape your blood.’
‘No, Granny.’
Tic! Tic! Tic!
‘Do you know why I chose a plug for you, Clodius?’
‘I do not, Granny.’
‘Because, Clodius, it all depends on you. Your family’s fortune rests on your little shoulders, did you know that? No, no, I should not think you do. It’s been kept from you for a good while now. Too long, I thought. You, like any of the great Iremongers, have a particular way with things. One in every generation or so has usually bubbled up with it, with some particular gift, and they have always kept us going. For there are many beyon
d here that want us crushed. Your perpetual screaming as an infant marked you out so very early. Personally, I wanted you drowned at birth for what you had done to me. But Umbitt would not have it, and so you lived. You lived and you grew – grew badly – and here you are now in trousers and being sent away from here. I gave you a plug, Clodius Iremonger, as your particular object because, blood of mine, you shall do one of two things. You shall, like a plug, keep us in, keep us safe, be a barrier between us and the threatening sinkhole. Or, conversely, you shall, like a plug that is pulled out, let us fall and tumble away, let us flow out to nothing, let us flood and gush and drip and be all gone!’
She paused for effect. Tic! Tic! Tic! Are the clocks, I wondered, are the clocks getting louder?
‘To end such a family,’ she continued, trying a smile now, ‘is a terrible thing, Clodius, to do that you should be emptying out your own mother, your own father, your aunts and your uncles, spilling them, your playmate cousins, your own Pinalippy wife, abandoning them to nothingness, and all this fortune and all this property so carefully amassed should be lost, should fade away, should be destroyed, and our people should be chased here and there and cursed at, spat at, reviled, broken, if you did it. If you betrayed your own blood.’ She leant forward now even further, her face reddened, her hands shaking, the pearls clinking. ‘Don’t pull out the plug, Clodius, don’t do it!’
‘I shall not, Grandmother, I will not!’
‘You mean to pull out the plug!’
‘I do not!’
‘You shall do it!’
‘I shall not!’
‘To your own family!’
‘No, Granny, no, no!’
‘Then kiss me, child, kiss me.’
Again I made the horrible journey across the carpet, and again as I leant forward, my lips touched upon very little indeed. But while I was so close, she took hold of my hand, and then, our faces so close together, she said, ‘Do not forsake us, Clodius.’
‘No, Grandmother.’
‘Do you love me, child?’
‘Yes, Granny, I do.’
‘Do not hurt those you love.’
‘I promise . . .’
‘You promise!’ she said with something like happiness. ‘There, then. That is what I needed. For you to promise me, here in this room, here before my marble mantelpiece about which your own mother has played, a solemn promise that Clodius Iremonger shall promise to support his family, to serve that family to the best of his abilities, to dedicate himself to them. Do you swear?’
‘I do.’
‘Say it then, swear it.’
‘I do swear it,’ I said, trembling and sweating.
She let my hand go. I returned to the sofa’s edge thinking what a very long time it was since last I was there. The storm was getting loud again, or was it my own heart sprinting, thumping to be out of its cage? I had sworn, and as I swore to my grandmother I had meant it all. I was an Iremonger then, truly an Iremonger, it was all that I had ever known. I should strive every day for the family. But why had Grandmother persisted so, why had she bullied and talked and spent so many words on me; it was as if she knew I doubted. I had doubted, I had for a little. As if she knew everything inside me: my fears for James Henry, my sorrow for the objects, but most of all my feeling for Lucy Pennant, a mere serving girl, a firegrate. Grandmother, all-seeing, was telling me I must put all that away, I must grow up at last. I was trousered now, I was going to the city. I shall not go to the Sitting Room, after all, I told myself, it’s wrong to go to the Sitting Room. I decided at that moment that I should not go.
‘I shall do well, Granny,’ I said at last.
‘You’re a good boy,’ she said.
‘It is very fine to be wearing trousers.’
‘It is, Clodius, indeed it is. Well done. I have something for you before you go, Clodius. For such an Iremonger as you. A little going-away present. A parting gift.’
She pointed to a round table on which rested a small package wrapped in tissue paper and tied up with a ribbon.
‘Take it, child,’ she said, ‘open it up, tell me what you have there.’
I unwrapped the little object. It was a small silver hand mirror.
‘Thank you, Granny,’ I said.
‘It is inscribed,’ she said. ‘Read it to me.’
‘SO THAT I MAY ALWAYS KNOW WHO I AM.’
‘That is it, quite right,’ she said. ‘I was going to give it to you today anyway, though I had no idea quite how appropriate it should be. You shall always know, Clodius, that you are an Iremonger of the best blood.’
‘Thank you, Granny.’
‘It is my pleasure, darling boy. You may go now.’
‘Thank you, Granny. Goodbye, Granny.’
‘So eager to leave your old grandmother? That is youth, is it not, always moving.’
‘Goodbye, Granny.’
‘Goodbye, Clodius, do great things.’
I was at the door then and in an eagerness to be the other side of it and far away from my grandmother and all her things and all her words.
‘Oh, Clodius?’ she called.
‘Yes, Granny,’ I said, very desperate now.
‘I love you.’
Must she say that? Must she nail me for ever to Iremonger property? Yes, yes, she must.
‘I love you, Granny,’ I said.
‘Off you run then,’ she said, and she smiled such a kind, loving smile that for a moment all I could think of was what a sweet old woman she was, how dear, how fragile, and for a little while I lost sight of the other grandmother, the unforgiving one, the unforgivable one, the fierce limiter of people’s lives. She even had tears in her eyes. My own grandmother.
It was noisier yet away from Grandmother’s room. Out in the house again, the roar of the storm everywhere about. All the shutters had been closed but things could be heard smashing against them. There was some broken glass along Grandmother’s corridor. The whole house was rumbling.
‘Has the train come in yet?’ I asked Grandmother’s porter on the main stairs.
‘Not yet, sir,’ he said.
‘It’s very late then.’
‘Yes, indeed it’s late, sir, very.’
‘Has there been much damage yet?’
‘I shouldn’t like to be in the attics now, there was a tumbling up there. There have been rushes of dust, sir, descending, even here upon the main stairway. You see a pile there, sir, ’bout halfway down.’
I saw it, a small mass of dirt and chippings, there was something of a crack in the ceiling, not very large, nothing to worry about probably.
‘I heard there was a Gathering, has it been caught?’
‘Not yet, I think. There are many noises all around the house tonight, and some of those might be a Gathering, and some might be the storm, I couldn’t exactly say. There are city people about the Gathering in any case, so it cannot last long.’
‘And tell me, porter, have the rats come down yet?’ I asked.
‘Yes, sir, two hours since. Just after you went in to see my lady. There was a great parade of them, never seen so many. All of one opinion, all going down, down the stairway. I stood here, out of their way, even upon the desk. It took them twelve minutes to quite pass through. Didn’t know we had that many.’
‘Where are they going?’
‘Oh, out, I would say, sir, shouldn’t you? They don’t want to stay in here.’
‘Where out?’
‘Out in the heaps of course.’
‘In the heaps, during a storm like this?’
‘Certainly, sir, they’d rather take their chances out there than be stuck in here. There’s nothing should keep them in the house tonight. T’ain’t safe, they think. What a fuss they made about it, skittish I’d call it. Didn’t let off their screeching. They didn’t want to stay here. Wouldn’t for anything. T’ain’t safe. T’ain’t safe. They think.’
‘Do you think it’s safe, Iremonger?’ I asked.
‘Me? You ask me? I’m no ex
pert in it, sir, far from it, but what I say to myself is, don’t go up to the attics, not the higher-most floors, no, don’t go there, nor the east wing that wobbles enough even in a mild wind, and do not go down, I’d say, don’t head down, it shall be flooded down there after a time, bound to be. As for myself, I’m staying here. Mid-house. Safest, I’d say. How about you, sir, if I may ask, where might you choose on such an evening?’
‘I don’t know, Iremonger, whether to go up or down and that’s the truth of it.’
‘Better not stay here, that might be considered loitering, sir. Best not to loiter, sir, in my opinion. Not becoming of such as yourself, sir.’
‘I think I’ll to my Cousin Tummis, porter, I must say goodbye.’
‘Very good then, sir.’
‘Goodnight, porter.’
‘Goodnight, Master Clodius, let us hope it is a safe one.’
My Friend Tummis
There was more Iremonger traffic than usual, some liveried Iremongers rushing about, and along Tummis’s corridor, aunts and uncles looking sombre. The carpet runner was damp underfoot from the storm leaking through, there was a definite puddle around the door that was the entrance into the rooms of Tummis and Tummis’s family. His parents, Second Cousin Icktor (ballcock) and Olish (carpet rod) and Tummis’s sibs, all younger than him, (U-bend, lavatory brush, doorstop, hatpin and mezzaluna) were all gathered outside. What’s all the fuss? Perhaps he’s been trousered too, I thought. That must be it, there was always a deal of fuss over trousers. Oh, how wonderful, I thought, that Tummis has been trousered too, we must shake hands, praise each other’s new togs, the feel of his herringbone, the wonder of turn-ups. He won’t quite look himself out of corduroy. I wonder where they’ll be sending Tummis, I wonder what they’ve found for him.
‘Good evening all,’ I said, wearing my best Iremonger frown on this moment of high family business.
‘Oh, Clod, this is not the place for you,’ said an aunt.
‘May I see my Cousin Tummis? I should like to shake his hand.’
‘No, Clod, you may not, run along now.’
‘I have been trousered too,’ I said, ‘as you can see. So I’ll not be dismissed.’
‘Oh, have you? That was well done then. But please, Clod, not now.’
‘I should like to wish him all the best and everything.’
‘No, Clod, enough with you.’